Newly open museum takes visitors to historic Java

Newly open museum takes visitors to historic Java

YOGYAKARTA (JP): A new museum that takes visitors to historic
Java is now open in the ancient city of Yogyakarta.

Museum of Javanese Culture, which opened on Oct. 21, does not
display its collections like most museums do. It does not use any
windows to display them.

Rather, the initial 500 pieces of about 300 varieties --
mostly earthenware tools and other daily life appliances -- are
displayed as naturally as an old Javanese community would have
kept them in a house. Cultivation tools such as hoes, axes,
machetes and knives of various models and sizes, for example, are
just placed at random on a bamboo wall at the back of the museum.

A traditional earthenware kitchen set is also placed this way
in a kitchen-like setting to resemble the actual scene. In
another corner of the museum, earthenware and ceramics vessels
are displayed in stacks in an old wooden buffet.

Director of Yogyakarta's Institute of Javanese Studies, Fadzar
Vyaktatomo, said, "The main idea is to make the museum as close
to the real setting of old Javanese community life as possible."

Film director Djun Saptohadi was chosen to design the museum's
interior. "We believe he has the capability to avoid making the
museum dull, to make it more lively," Vyaktatomo said.

The museum, located in Tembi hamlet, Timbulharjo village,
Bantul subdistrict, eight kilometers south of the city, currently
occupies a 900-square-meter room in the Institute of Javanese
Studies 3,500 square-meter building. Vyaktatomo said it will be
gradually expanded so that the whole building will be used by the
museum and a library.

"We hope the museum will be able to supply information about
the Javanese culture, especially about daily tools used by bygone
Javanese communities," he said.

According to Vyaktatomo, even though there are many museums
that have the ability to give information about the past culture,
there are none that gives specific information about the tools
the Javanese community used to use in their daily life.

The museum plans to add to its collections, so that eventually
it will display about 5,000 different items. "We wish to
accomplish this in two years," he said, adding that the museum
uses L. Th. Mayer's book Een Blik in Het Javaansche Volksleven (A
Glance at Javanese Community Life) published by E.J. Brill,
Leiden, 1897, as a reference.

In this instance, he said, the museum does not consider the
antiqueness of the collection as the most important element.
"It's the completeness of the collection that matters, as the
main goal is to give a comprehensive description of past Javanese
community life," he said.

With such a consideration, therefore, the museum's management
would not hesitate to make a replica of particular items should
they no longer be able to find originals.

Among other items displayed in the museum are luku or waluku
(buffalo-driven cultivating tool), lesung (rice milling
equipment) and alu (rice stamper), dhakon (a child's game),
traditional kris of different models and sizes, a traditional
gambling game called cliwik and even a set of traditional opium
inhaling paraphernalia called bedudan. (swa)